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"The truth is we don't know what will happen. Will the two patterns reinforce each other? Will they cancel each other? Are they going to act in sequence? Are they going to be regional? We really don't know,"

it is still unclear how global warming is affected by the frequency or magnitude of El Nino events.

The maternal mortality ratio has declined by 45 percent worldwide, and the proportion of the global population using an improved drinking water source rose from 76 percent to 91 percent

Those still left out, however, are increasingly concentrated in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and all across the globe, women and young people face the highest odds of living in poverty

While hunger has fallen in most areas, projections indicate that the prevalence of undernourishment in the Middle East will rise by 32 percent between 2014 and 2016 due to war, civil unrest, and increasing numbers of refugees.

Progress in maternal health is sharply divided along rural-urban lines

marginalized and easily forgotten amidst promising overall trends. “Millions of people are being left behind, especially the poorest and those disadvantaged because of their sex, age, disability, ethnicity, or geographic location,”

We need to tackle root causes and do more to integrate the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development,

“employment opportunities have diminished in both developing and developed regions

he employment-to-population ratio, which measures what percentage of the working population is employed, has declined around the world since 1990 with the biggest drops in East and South Asia.

rapid urbanization is taxing already-inadequate infrastructure. The proportion of the urban population living in slums in developing regions fell from 39 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2014, surpassing the MDG target. However, the total number of urban residents living in slums continues to grow as a result of accelerating urbanization and population growth

Population growth and increased consumption have also stressed the environment, presenting challenges that overshadow progress on the seventh MDG

While ozone-depleting substances have nearly been eliminated since 1990 and the ozone layer is expected to recover by midcentury, carbon dioxide emissions have risen by more than 50 percent in the past 25 years

Between 1998 and 2011, the number of countries experiencing water stress increased from 36 to 41. Water scarcity currently affects more than 40 percent of the world population, a statistic that is only projected to increase.

For the global poor whose livelihoods are directly tied to natural resources and suffer the most from environmental degradation, climate change hinders development in other sectors. That’s why environmental change is a much bigger focus in the Sustainable Development Goals, set to be adopted later this year.

It does this by measuring the productive land and sea area available – cropland and pasture, forests and fishing grounds – and matching that against the demands placed on them. This biological accountancy system concludes that planet Earth has a biocapacity of 12 billion hectares, and a human demand equivalent to 18 billion hectares. Hence the 1.5 Earths figure. Our footprint is 50 per cent too big.

I had assumed that the analysis assessed the damaging environmental consequences of how we use the land – things like soil erosion and the overuse of water reserves. But no. It only measures land area.

“Local ecosystem abuse is a significant problem [but] to make reliable adjustments would require data sets that do not exist,” he writes. Or, as he told me: “Our current accounts cannot include soil erosion. Hence cropland use equals cropland availability.”

It uses UN statistics to compare the timber we harvest against annual growth. The conclusion is that, while we are deforesting some areas, growth elsewhere more than makes up for the loss. This is reflected in a surplus in the accounts.

If the calculation is to be believed, while some fish stocks are being over-exploited, a greater number are under-exploited and overall fish biomass is increasing. That’s another surplus

"Up in the north, it's still about survival," he said.With that in mind, the Canadian Army plans to outfit individual soldiers with new winter warfare equipment, including snowshoes, skis and toboggans. Up to $49 million will be spent on that gear with deliveries to begin in 2021.

he Army plans to purchase up to 100 all-terrain vehicles capable of operations in the snow.

Increasing the Canadian government and military's presence in the resource-rich Arctic is a key defense platform for Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Harper contends that the increased military and government presence is needed because oil, gas and minerals in the Arctic are critical to the country's economic growth. The types of incidents the Canadian Forces would most likely have to respond to in the Arctic, Jolin said, would be a major environmental disaster or a search-and-rescue operation, such as aiding a commercial cruise ship that has capsized after hitting an uncharted obstacle.

"The biggest thing will be coordination, so you'll want to have the ability to mount a command post, have good radios and radars, good surveillance," he said. "It's about command and control, power generation and communications."

construction of two polar communications and weather satellites.

The Canadian military also has an increased surveillance capability planned for the Arctic, dubbed Polar Epsilon 2. The system will use the data produced by the Canadian government's Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) spacecraft currently under design. The RCM satellites are scheduled for launch in 2018.

Originally the plan was to build a deep-water port at Nanisivik, but because of the high costs of construction in the Arctic that has been scaled back to a $130 million refueling site for the Royal Canadian Navy. The site will be used to support the new Arctic offshore patrol ships.

But the British Red Cross charity said the initiative could potentially help it locate vulnerable communities.Finer details

Facebook intends to use the maps to inform its Internet.org initiative, which aims to connect more people to the internet.

The company is currently developing drones that would extend internet signals beyond cities via lasers beamed between the aircraft.

"There are many areas globally that still remain off the digital map," said British Red Cross maps expert Andrew Braye."These areas are also home to vulnerable communities at risk from natural disasters or conflict.

"Organisations that share open data are enabling the humanitarian sector to respond more rapidly."The information is then available to emergency responders and assists with decision-making."

Nearly 100 million people worldwide are facing food and water shortages this year due to drought and floods linked to El Niño.

current

El Niño is also helping to spread vector-borne diseases, like Zika, malaria, and dengue fever. And all the crazy weather is creating an uncertain economic environment, too.

been a few Florida tornado outbreaks th

This is what weather chaos looks like. Thankfully, climate scientists are using this rare event to learn as much as they can about what the super El Niño might tell them about future events and climate change—like in coral reefs, which are especially threatened this year.

his El Niño will transition to a La Niña—featuring an unusually cool patch of tropical Pacific waters—by late this year.

The practice encourages partnership between Mexicans abroad, local community leaders, and state and federal authorities.

hospital's long-term-care ward

Japanese leaders have made radical changes to the way health care is delivered in recent decades, most notably with the introduction of long-term-care insurance in 2000. The system is far from perfect, but Japan has been unafraid to improve the system as they learned its faults, and as an economic boom gave way to zero growth.

ut Japan's government, businesses and society are facing these challenges earlier than others, allowing the world to learn and benefit from their stumbles, innovations and experiments.

5 per cent of Japan's population is currently over the age of 65,

where the hospital says there are no trainee nurses.

this demographic is forecast to make up a full 40 per cent of the country's population by 2060

2010 and 2060, the percentage of Japanese citizens over the age of 75 will more than double from 11 per cent to 27 per cent

he absolute number of old people will soon level off in Japan, but the proportion of the population who are young is declining rapidly: The percentage of Japanese younger than 19 years old, who constituted 40 per cent of the population in 1960, will decline to just 13 per cent in 2060.

apan's total population peaked in 2010 at around 127 million people and has already begun to decline. In 2014, the country lost a record 268,000 people, as deaths continued to outstrip births.

ging society is a reality, as well as a business opportunity.

Lawson Inc.,

"seniors' salon" with a blood pressure monitor, pamphlets on municipal health care services and nursing homes, and on-staff social workers.

he store also has a special section featuring adult diapers, special wipes for bathing the elderly, straw cups, a gargling basin and detergent that is tough on urine and perfect for bed mats and wheelchair coverings. Staff will also deliver heavier items, such as bags of rice or water, to local residents.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration is concerned about how Japan's aging and shrinking work force will slow down the national economy. One piece of Mr. Abe's so-called Abenomics revival program – which also includes getting more women in the workplace – is an emphasis on new medical technologies, including experimental regenerative medicine and cell therapy. The hope is that with two new acts governing regenerative medicine to help commercialize technologies more quickly, the Japanese government can save money on future health care costs while spurring the creation of a valuable new industry – particularly in bio-medical hubs such as the one in Kobe, which features a gleaming new mini-city of medical buildings, research centres and hospitals on a man-made island near the port city's airport.

macro level, Japan's predicament is prosperity, which is always followed by lower fertility rates and higher life expectancy. At 83.4 years, Japan has the longest life expectancy at birth in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Many Japanese people are also fearful of the type of immigration that has sustained slow population growth in the industrialized West.

The elderly in Japan, similar to seniors across Asia, are less likely to live with their children

women, after decades of opting out of a career after giving birth, are also being encouraged by the government to re-enter the work force, something that may eventually help boost Japan's declining labour numbers, as the government hopes, but also prevents women from acting as caregivers.

small baby boom "echo" took place between 1971 and 1974

Liberal Democratic Party to expand the country's health care system as Japan aged, but by the 1990s, the enormous price tag raised the spectre of tax hikes.

Japan chose to supplement its national pension plan with long-term-care insurance (LTCI), which was implemented in 2000.

one of the most generous long-term-care systems in the world in terms of coverage and benefits."

People pay into the system starting in their 40s and are eligible to receive benefits starting at 65, or earlier in the case of illness.

assigns the person a care level.

allowing the patient to choose between competing institutions and service providers offering everything from home visits, bathing and help getting groceries to paying for short stays in hospitals or long-term residence in nursing homes and specialized group homes for dementia patients.

The LTCI system covers up to $2,900 a month in services, as opposed to cash payment, and does require "co-payments" from patients. LTCI co-payments are capped or waived for low-income individuals, and the system saves money by providing options other than full-on institutionalization.

has demonstrated to other governments around the world that it pays to adjust programs before problems become systemic.

The LTCI system was originally designed to alleviate the strain on family caregivers, but that hasn't entirely happened. Research shows that LTCI, in terms of freeing up family carers to work and have more free time for themselves, has only marginally benefited caregivers, and only then from wealthier families.